the pity Dante’s story evokes from the reader? How does this pity relate to the poem’s larger purpose of moral education, to Dante’s pilgrimage, and the depiction of Hell as a structure of Divine justice? If we’re meant to “feel sorry” for Francesca or for Dante the pilgrim, what is the effect of that pity in understanding the episode?
Assignment
For this paper, you are asked to identify and explain another crux in the poem, selected from somewhere between Cantos VI and XXV. Find a particular moment of apparent ambiguity, ambivalence, and tension – a “crossroads” at which the reader must choose a direction to continue.
(1) Identify the crux.
(2) Explain its context or implications.
(3) Formulate a series of questions that pose alternative directions or possibilities of meanings.
(4) Develop one or more hypotheses for choosing a direction of interpretation, some ideas for clarifying the ambiguity, resolving the ambivalence, or making sense of the tension.
